Biblical Hebrew name from *nathan* (give) and *Yah* (God): “God has given.”
Mattaniah is a Hebrew name of considerable antiquity, composed of the elements mattan (meaning 'gift') and Yah (the shortened form of the divine name Yahweh), yielding the devotional meaning 'gift of God.' This construction places Mattaniah in the same family as Matthew, Nathaniel, and Jonathan, all names built from the idea of divine bestowal, though Mattaniah preserves an older, less abbreviated Hebrew form that gives it a more archaic resonance. The name appears multiple times in the Hebrew Bible, most dramatically as the birth name of Zedekiah, the last king of Judah.
When Nebuchadnezzar II installed him as a vassal ruler in 597 BCE, the Babylonian king renamed him Zedekiah ('righteousness of God'), but the record in Second Kings preserves Mattaniah as the name his mother gave him — a small act of historical memory. Other biblical Mattaniahs include several Levitical musicians and temple functionaries mentioned in Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah, giving the name a strong association with sacred music and liturgical service in ancient Israelite tradition. Mattaniah has never been a common name in modern usage, which is part of its appeal for parents drawn to biblical names that feel both authentic and uncommon.
It predates the Greek and Latin transformations that gave us 'Matthew,' and carrying that full, four-syllable form signals a kind of deliberate return to an older layer of the tradition. In Jewish communities with a taste for classical Hebrew onomastics, Mattaniah occasionally reappears as a choice that honors heritage without defaulting to the familiar.